


and live with shadows tost

by tkillamockingbird (Theboys)



Series: milkteeth [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Kid Fic, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-26 18:49:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20394463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theboys/pseuds/tkillamockingbird
Summary: Aegon’s too young to understand who Rhaenys and Arthur are; they’re an abstract concept that he has little time for.





	and live with shadows tost

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from I Am! By John Clare.
> 
> this will probably make little sense without having read the primary installment, milkteeth, but it also has cute kids--which might require no backstory at all! It's the kind of fluff everyone deserves after reading milkteeth, so do as you please and thanks for coming!

Jon

307 AC

Aegon keeps a wooden sword around his waist until his fifth nameday.

Jon decides to offer him Doom with something like trepidation. Sansa argues with him about it the entire night prior, Aerea kept close to her breast, the babe’s silver hair curling in soft waves around her ears.

“I don’t like it,” Sansa hisses and Jon raises his eyebrows and runs a finger down Doom’s hilt.

“The boy’s been giving Art splinters for years, love,” Jon says in his defense, and Sansa snorts, tucking her loose hair behind an ear.

Jon used to brush it for her before Art was born but now their children demand so much of their mother’s time that Sansa is often too tired to allow him to play in it before bed.

It shines in the firelight and Jon can’t help himself; he crosses over to press a kiss to that soft ringlet that always flops against her forehead before she’s able to tame it down.

“Stop distracting me,” Sansa says, but there’s a pretty flush that wasn’t on her cheeks before.

Aerea makes a plaintive sound and Jon watches with a tight chest as his daughter’s little fist catches around the lace at her mother’s throat.

“You can hold her if you like,” Sansa teases. “She won’t break.”

Jon almost shakes his head no before he realizes that he’ll only be confirming his fears. Rhaenys was the only girl he ever knew and this is his first daughter. His little girl.

“She loves you,” Sansa says, dipping her light eyes to look at Aerea’s pink face.

She’s a year old this past week and her vocabulary doesn’t seem to be more than the names of her favorite people.

Jon glances to the dagger on the desk.

Aegon’s dagger. 

The Elder, both the history books and the people call him, sixth of his name.

His nephew, Aegon the Younger. In fact, the boy is too young to truly understand what his face means and Jon doesn’t want to be the one to expose him to the truth of the matter.

“Come here, love,” Sansa says, lifting Aerea away from her lap with both hands.

Aerea’s white nightrail comes down well past her feet and Sansa sweeps the excess into one hand, winding it round and round until it coalesces into a little ball of fabric that she places against Aerea’s thighs when she lays their daughter in Jon’s arms.

“It’s the dragonblood,” Sansa says in response to his unasked question.

“She has Aegon’s eyes too,” Jon says helplessly, rocking her in his arms. Aerea’s pink mouth opens wide in a yawn, her bright lashes pressed into the apples of her cheeks.

“And her hair is as long as mine at her age. That’s to say, too long,” Sansa laughs. “She doesn’t have his face. She has the Targaryen coloring, is all.”

“Everywhere I look I see their ghosts,” Jon says, and Sansa stands from her rocking chair, rising to tiptoes to press a kiss against his temple.

“You’ll need to look elsewhere, then. You’ve a kingdom to run and four beautiful children, one of which, blessedly, I didn’t have to carry but can love all the same.”

Sansa clasps her hands together under her chin and Jon is filled with an abrupt outpouring of love for her.

Three babes in five years and still she tolerates him--and better yet, allows him into her bed.

“You won’t be giving me another so soon, Your Grace,” Sansa says saucily as Jon hefts Aerea so that she rests against his shoulder.

His forearm curves under her bottom and her bounces her absently.

“Aerea hasn’t even been weaned yet,” she adds, backing away in jest.

Jon advances on Sansa despite her protests and he stifles a laugh as she hitches her dark skirts up to throw them over one arm.

“I’ll sail to Driftmark,” Sansa laughs again, and Gods, does Jon adore her.

“Your sister’s only just had her first babe. You’d cause her added strain?”

Sansa snorts again and doesn’t bother hiding it. 

“Arya most likely has the baby swaddled and aboard a seahorse galley already,” she says dryly and Jon can only concede defeat.

“All I want to know is if you’re sure,” Sansa says hesitantly, picking up the thread of their conversation from earlier.

“I’m never sure. Not about anything. But he knows who he looks like. He’s got the Dayne blood in him. He’s been fighting with a blade since he could grip.”

Jon looks unhappy and Aerea mewls as though she can sense it, her messy braid falling so that it tickles Jon’s cheek.

“Arthur would have begun to train him. He deserves some of what his life could have been,” Jon says quietly, and Sansa’s small hands are white knuckled against the fabric of her gown.

“You can’t live your life this way,” Sansa admonishes him but Aerea wakes up entirely at her mother’s voice, rearing her whole body backwards in that hazardous way that all small babes do.

“Aye, my little moonbloom,” Jon laughs, tightening his arms around her delicate body.

“Do you want your Mother?”

Aerea’s eyes are a dull violet in the low light and she swings a small hand up to smack against Jon’s beard, her fingers tangled in his curls.

“Fa,” she says quietly, and Jon feels that same warmth he first noticed when returning from Dorne with a babe considerably bigger than he had been when they had left.

“Come here, my little darling,” Sansa says, and Aerea squirms sleepily in the direction of her mother’s command.

Jon releases her reluctantly. 

He’d been away on progress when Art was born and away squashing the Greyjoy Rebellion when Jace was birthed.

Aerea is the only child he’s ever seen right as she exited her mother, and there was something otherworldly about watching her come screaming into his life during the highest moon of the season.

“You can make new memories with him,” Sansa says as she leaves, one hand curled around Aerea’s wrist so the babe doesn’t chew on her mother’s long hair.

Jon thinks of his brother’s bright grin, duller now with the passage of time.

Aegon will never have any sons. 

Rhaenys gave him a namesake all the same.

-

Aegon receives Doom with all the grace that Jon expected.

That is to say, barely any at all.

Art is loud beside him, bold and charismatic in a way that Aegon doesn’t care to be.

“Gods! It’s red! You have to let me hold it, Egg!”

Jon winces every time he hears the nickname in that childish lilt. Sometimes he thinks the curse would’ve been easier to bear had Rhaenys not named her son after it.

Art and Aegon are of a height despite their year difference in age.

Art is Tully red with his mother’s eyes. He has Rheagar’s aquiline nose and, it seems, his raw determination.

“You’re just a baby, Art. It’s mine. Father gave it to me.”

Jon drops to his knees in front of the two little boys before harsh words become violence.

“It’s one of Aegon’s nameday presents, Art,” Jon says gently, and the four-year-old narrows teal eyes.

“I’m almost five too,” Art says, crossing his arms over the blood-red dragon on his chest. Art refuses to wear anything other than makeshift livery and Sansa only encourages him, sewing the three-headed beast on child-sized linens.

“But not yet. And when you’re five, you’ll get your own blade like Aegon’s. But not before.”

Art’s cheeks are flushed with rage and he looks askance at Aegon.

“Well then, how-how are we ‘sposed to fight, if he’s got a real blade and I’ve got wood!”

“M’not gonna fight you with steel, stupid. Father says we can’t fight with steel til we’re old.”

Jon runs a hand through his hair and resists the urge to simultaneously laugh and pinch at the bridge of his nose.

He can’t remember if he and Egg were this insufferable but he thanks father for getting them through the worst of it.

“I’m older’n Jace,” Art counters, just as stubborn as his mother.

“Yes, well, Jace is barely three. He’s probably still smearing something unmentionable on Septa Loren’s face,” Jon quips and both boys laugh, previous troubles forgotten.

“Am I having a party, Father?” Aegon asks seriously, his violet eyes almost dark against his pale skin. 

Jon’s gotten better at looking into the young face of his brother but it’s always especially difficult on namedays.

Jon cups a hand around Aegon’s neck and draws him close for a kiss to the forehead.

“Aye, dear boy. Your mother has made sure of it.”

Art opens his mouth, probably in complaint, and Jon scrubs a hand down his face before he can work up the air.

Art giggles at the treatment, stumbling backwards and latching onto Aegon’s sleeve for the trouble.

“Will you--will you be there?”

Jon’s heart twists. For a long time after they returned to the Red Keep, Aegon wouldn’t sleep or eat without Jon’s presence, and preferably, his touch.

Jon thinks about spending time he didn’t have to make sure the babe ate.

Sansa had been nearly ready to give birth and almost sick with worry about how Aegon would fare when Jon inevitably had to leave.

He had warmed up to Sansa eventually, more willing to sit cradled in her lap and listen to the restless gurgles of her stomach when she was heavy with Jace and then Aerea.

“I wish that I could be there, son,” Jon says, pressing one hand down so that it sits heavily atop Aegon’s curls. Silver ringlets peek from between the crevices of Jon’s fingers and he can’t help but think that his hand looks like an unbearably heavy crown.

“Where are you going, Father?” Art chirps, fiddling at the wooden practice sword at his hip. They look almost identical but for their coloring.

Sansa sews little dragonhead livery for Aegon as well, despite asking him if he’d like the falling star of his father’s house.

Aegon’s too young to understand who Rhaenys and Arthur are; they’re an abstract concept that he has little time for.

Sansa keeps a small linen shirt with purple coloring just in case, her eyes heavy and saddened.

“To Dorne to visit with House Martell,” Jon says, dragging Art forward by the waist so that he can pepper him with kisses.

“Ugh! Soldiers don’t kiss, Father. They ride dragons!” Art brandishes his sword, narrowly avoiding Jon’s stones in the process, and Aegon looks down at the dragon-hilt of his new blade.

“It’s called Doom, Aegon,” Jon says. “You can rename it, if you like. A House sword must keep its name forever and ever, but this is your first one. You can call it whatever you like.”

Art has scrambled away already, yelling at the top of his lungs about riding Vhagar into battle, although his lisp makes it sound endearingly harmless.

“Egg! Come here so the dragon doesn’t--doesn’t roast you to a crisp!”

Septa Loren will be there soon to dress them for the day and wipe the dirt from their faces, but Jon relishes the chance to see them before he leaves.

Art collides with the corner of a desk and Jon sucks in his air sharply at the sound.

“You keep it for me,” Aegon says carefully, pushing the dagger into Jon’s hands, very solemnly turning it hilt first.

“Sometimes Jace and Aerea come to play. They’re babes and I don’t want them to touch it and get hurt.”

Aegon looks so serious, with his head full of angel curls, that Jon laughs loudly. He doesn’t have the heart to tell the boy he’d never allow children so young to hold on to a weapon like this.

“Thank you for thinking of them,” Jon says, and Art clatters against something else, the armoire, maybe?

“Some names are good names. So you shouldn’t change them,” Aegon says, tugging at the wooden sword at his waist.

“Dracarys!”

Aegon screams in High Valyrian and turns on his heel, hair bouncing as he collides with Art at full tilt. 

They go down with the sort of sound that would have Sansa sending for the maesters but Jon knows they’ll have nothing more than split lips by the end of the day.

Jon holds Doom close to his chest as he leaves.


End file.
